Fragile Soul
by Sailorcelestial
Summary: Miroku pulled his hand back quickly, the fingers curling into a fist. Inuyasha saw an expression bloom in the monk’s eyes he did not like at all. Miroku’s gaze spoke of terrible things.


Authors Notes are at the end.

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Fragile Soul

Inuyasha growled. He smelled the trail clearly, and could see the marks where Kagome's kidnappers had passed through the foliage. Behind him, Miroku and Sango stumbled through the darkness, unable to see as well as he could. If only they could smell as well as he did; Inuyasha distinctly picked up the scent of fear. Terror. Kagome's.

"Damn it, you guys," he called, "you're too fucking slow! I'm going ahead!"

"Inuyasha, don't!" 

Miroku's plea was lost in shadows as Inuyasha plunged forward, following the smell of Kagome, panic, and sweat. A growl rumbled deep in his throat as he thought about Kagome in danger. Those bastards wouldn't kill her. If they did, he would rip them apart slowly, limb by putrid limb. He would enjoy it. He would take a bath in their blood and laugh while doing so if they dared to even think about hurting Kagome. 

The trail blurred. Inuyasha planted his feet into the soft forest floor and veered to a stop. He sniffed the air frantically, trying to pick up the direction again. Damn it, why did the trail vanish?

His ears twitched, picking up the faint sound of running water. He sniffed again. Sure enough, the trail led in the direction of the water and faded on the return trip. The bastards were smart, at least in covering their asses. Apparently, however, they hadn't counted on being followed by a hanyou. A normal inu wouldn't be able to pick up the trail at all; to Inuyasha, the fading smell was merely an inconvenience. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply.

__

There!

Unmistakable Kagome-smell. Smell of forests and fire smoke and scents from her world that he couldn't place but made her stand out among everyone else. Lacing all of those smells was the sharp, tangy scent of Kagome's terror that drove him on. 

His legs moved again, pushing him through branches and bushes, towards the place Kagome's smell lead him. The forest ended and as he broke from the foliage he came on a steep incline. It wasn't exactly a cliff, but it wasn't a gentle rolling hill either. He would have to be careful going down if only because he wouldn't be any use to Kagome if he broke his legs trying to get to her. Damn it all to hell, why couldn't rescuing that baka onna ever be easy? 

__

Why the hell was she out alone anyway?!?

Oh, fuck. Nevermind. He knew why she was out alone. Kikyou had come again. Inuyasha tried to shake the miko from his head as he moved as quickly as he could down the Earth wall. She refused to leave, as she always did. Kikyou wouldn't die, either physically or in his heart, though by now he knew it would be better for everyone, including Kikyou, if she would. She was a walking corpse, she just refused to give up the false life Urasue had given her. Not until she'd killed Inuyasha. She wanted to take him to hell with her. 

Inuyasha pondered his immense and powerful stupidity even as he sniffed the air for Kagome's precise location. He'd promised Kikyou his life, nearly cut off all contact with Kagome as a result, and chased the miko from one side of Japan to the other until he thought his legs would fall off. She constantly eluded him, pushing away the final confrontation. Naraku remained alive and so long as that bastard lived, so would Kikyou, and in her mind, so would Inuyasha. First Naraku would die, then the miko and the hanyou would fight once more until both were dead.

Inuyasha didn't want that anymore. That realization had come on him slowly, after Kagome's return and her silent acceptance of his decision to protect Kikyou and die by her hand. Kagome had been so damned _gracious_ about the whole thing. She still fought alongside him and cried his name when he needed to hear her voice the most and she tolerated with quiet dignity the times when he lost his head over that damned to all hells fucking miko, even if she didn't understand exactly why. 

__

I don't want to go to hell with Kikyou anymore, he thought for the first time in complete words, _I want to stay with Kagome._

He'd told Kikyou as much during their meeting, though not in such straightforward language. She laughed at him. Kikyou taunted him for trying to back out, for trying to save his own skin, but all her taunting did was make him see her even more clearly. She was not the Kikyou he once loved. Not at all. 

So he left her there, and returned to the village with a heart made lighter by his decision, and the urge to tell Kagome. Miroku waited for him at the entrance to Kaede's hut, announcing without preamble that Kagome-sama had been so upset by Inuyasha's meat-headed abandonment that she went for a walk on her own. 

The night air trembled with a scream. 

Inuyasha bolted towards the sound, no longer careful of where he stepped. He leaped from his position down to where the ground became level again and from there sniffed and waited. No more screams came, and the wind blew in the completely wrong direction. 

"Damn!" 

Panic surged. Without sounds or smells to guide him, Kagome could be right under his nose and he'd never know. He felt as helpless as he did on the nights of the new moon. 

Then the wind changed, and Kagome's smell re-emerged, this time saturated with blood. Red washed Inuyasha's vision. A growl tore from him and he didn't even register knowing the correct direction until his feet led him to an old, crumbling hut on the outskirts of what must have once been a prosperous village. The state of this particular hut, however, mirrored that of the others, so the villager's luck must have run out. They were probably used to thieves and kidnappers. That would explain the lack of anyone on the streets, even early in the night. 

Inuyasha kicked the door in, firelight greeting his eyes. Haloed in the orange glow, Kagome kneeled against one wall, clothing ripped from the journey through the forest, and one of the three men in the room paused in reaching for her. 

"Scum!" Inuyasha lunged forward, claws extended. "Don't touch Kagome!"

The man moved at the last moment, just barely getting out of the reach of those deadly claws. Inuyasha stood between Kagome and her kidnappers, feeling the grin spread across his face. Once again he saved her from the brink of death, and she'd better damn well thank him for this later. 

"I-It's a youkai!"

"You're damn right I'm a youkai." Inuyasha left out the part about also being half human. It just didn't seem important. "So you three better say your fucking prayers!"

He assumed the words they screamed as they stumbled over each other to get away from him were prayers. Inuyasha sniffed, separating the three distinct scents in his mind. For now they weren't important and he would let them run. But if he found out they'd hurt Kagome, he would remember those scents and track them down.

Once their shouts faded into the night, Inuyasha turned to look down at Kagome. She shuddered, arms crossed over her chest, and trembled like the flames of the fire. She didn't look at him; her gaze seemed fixed on some point on the wall behind him. Inuyasha knelt in front of her.

"Hey, Kagome, they're gone. No thanks to you. I thought you were finally learning to protect yourself a little."

No reply. 

Darkness floated in the oceans of her eyes, the eyes so lively, usually filled with kindness and worry for him after an event such as this. These were the eyes that he could drown in, where he liked to rest on peaceful nights. He could lose himself there and be content in being lost. That place was empty, and it frightened him. The fear coiled in his stomach like no other fear ever felt before because something was very, very wrong with Kagome and he couldn't imagine what. He reached out.

"Kagome, what—"

"Don't touch me!" She knocked his hand away, eyes blazing to life in a surge of terror. Kagome shifted away from him and pressed herself into the wall as though she wanted only to disappear within the boards forever. 

"K-Kagome . . . ." 

She had never struck him before, not even in her worst anger. The closest she came to that was saying her word and forcing him to the ground. But sometimes, and he would admit this only in the quietest parts of his heart, sometimes he deserved it. This time, however, he'd done nothing but try to touch her, to offer her comfort. Didn't girls LIKE being comforted? Damn it, couldn't he ever do anything right?

"Inuyasha!"

Miroku appeared in the doorway, Sango right behind him, just as Inuyasha looked up. The monk and the Taijiya both panted heavily from the run to keep up with him. 

"Inuyasha, is Kagome-sama hurt?"

"I-I don't know," he admitted, setting his eyes down on Kagome again. Though her body still trembled, the spark in her eyes had died again, leaving the empty ocean that frightened him so much. "She won't let me touch her."

Miroku entered the small hut and knelt beside Inuyasha, watching Kagome closely. Once, a long time ago, Inuyasha would have been jealous of the monk's gaze. Now he knew beyond any doubts that Miroku was a loyal friend and trusted the monk without question. So he felt no jealousy—okay, maybe a little jealousy—when Miroku reached out to Kagome and touched her arm. Kagome's head jerked, and she gave a cry. Miroku pulled his hand back quickly, the fingers curling into a fist. Inuyasha saw an expression bloom in the monk's eyes he did not like at all. Miroku's gaze spoke of terrible things.

"What's wrong?" Inuyasha glanced between Miroku and Sango, who had the same look in her eyes. "What's wrong with her?"

Miroku didn't answer. When he spoke, it wasn't to Inuyasha.

"Sango, you'll have to take her."

"Hai." The Taijiya moved forward and took Kagome in her arms. The girl twitched and jerked, but after a moment stopped fighting. Seeing Sango's face seemed to calm her.

Outside the night grew darker. The four made slow progress back to their own village because Sango had to help Kagome walk. The girl from the future stumbled with every other step. Sometimes Inuyasha thought he heard her mumbling to herself and that scared him nearly as much as the emptiness in her eyes. Inuyasha moved close to Miroku.

"What's wrong with her?"

Miroku shook his head and refused to speak. The hand not clenched tightly to his staff trembled in a fist, as though ready to strike at anyone at any moment. Inuyasha couldn't remember ever having seen the monk so angry. Gods, how much fear could one person feel in the course of a night? Kagome's reaction to him, and the two humans' reactions to her . . . he didn't understand. Something was going on just beneath the surface of this drama that Inuyasha couldn't for the life of him comprehend and no one would tell him what the plot was or even what role he played. 

Thought he wanted to beat the truth out of Miroku, he didn't. Whether it was the look on his face or the way Kagome shivered in Sango's grasp or the words Sango spat under her breath, Inuyasha knew that truth would have to wait if for no other reason than getting Kagome back to Kaede's hut for treatment. The old woman needed to heal Kagome, gods Kaede needed to heal her because those empty ocean eyes speared him mercilessly. Empty oceans without a speck of life within. 

The party reentered their village quietly. The darker night kept most inhabitants inside, but every so often Inuyasha saw the parting of a door screen and curious eyes looking out at them. The old-timers had never quite gotten over Kagome's resemblance to Kikyou and Inuyasha supposed none of the villagers would ever consider a hanyou living in their midst usual. Miroku and Sango, as monk and Taijiya, held a certain respect in their hearts and minds. Put all of that together and anything the group did had high interest for the common people living in a small, quiet village on the edge of nowhere. 

Kaede met them at her door. She rarely smiled, but this time Inuyasha thought he sensed a harder edge than normal to the line that passed for her lips and a steelier gleam in the one eye that peered at them. He wondered, not for the first or even the second time, if some sort of special spiritual type person communication had passed between Miroku and Kaede, for her expression when she appeared already had the same dangerous mien as the other two humans. 

"Sango," the old woman said, motioning for the younger woman to bring Kagome forward, "bring her here." That one eye locked on Miroku and Inuyasha. "You stay out here for now."

"Hai, Kaede-sama." 

"Wait just a fu—"

Miroku grabbed Inuyasha by the arm and pulled him away as Kaede let the screen fall shut. The two struggled, Inuyasha to get away and Miroku to get the hanyou far from the hut. The monk managed to get the hanyou as far as one of the village fences before Inuyasha snarled and finally managed to snatch his arm from Miroku's grasp. He whirled on Miroku, curling his claws dangerously.

"Tell me what the FUCK is going on, or I'll gut you right here and now!"

Miroku gave Inuyasha the most puzzled and puzzling expression. The monk's eyes shifted over Inuyasha's shoulder, where Sango's smell approached slowly. Inuyasha positioned himself so he could see them both, and both had a mixture of anger and confusion on their faces and in their scents. Sango, however, seemed more angry than anything else. She walked up to Inuyasha and locked his eyes with her dark ones.

"Baka. How can you NOT know what's happened to her? Does the word 'rape' mean anything to you??"

Rape? The word had an ugly sound. He knew it described something he never wanted to fully understand, but the fact was he had to, because he didn't. He didn't know the word, had never heard it before, and somehow that ugly word applied to Kagome.

Miroku must have picked up his confusion by his expression.

"Sango, I don't think the word _does_ mean anything to him." The monk sighed and paced. "Gods, Inuyasha, how can you not know what rape is?"

"I've never fucking heard it. I don't know what it means, so why don't you explain it." Helplessness washed over him, the emotion he hated most. How could he help Kagome if he didn't even understand what had happened to her? 

Sango made a sound of frustration and turned away, walking to the fence and lifting herself to sit on it. Miroku sat on the ground near her, holding his staff as though some danger lurked near. Inuyasha suspected the only danger, however, was in whatever explanation they planned to give. 

"I am not going to assume you are so naïve as to not know what sex is, usually termed 'mating' by the Inu Youkai." Miroku fixed dark eyes on Inuyasha. 

"Of course I know about mating, baka." He didn't bother to tell them it had been the last thing his mother explained to him before she became too ill to speak for long. 

"Well, then you know that mating is supposed to be a consensual act."

"Uh . . . ." He wasn't quite sure about the word 'consensual'. Damn it, why couldn't humans just use plain, clear words like every normal person?

"The two people involved are supposed to agree to the act of mating." 

"Right." This didn't make things any clearer, and Inuyasha growled. "What's the point of this? What does any of this have to do with Kagome?"

Miroku and Sango exchanged a glance over his shoulder, and the monk sighed. 

"Be patient, Inuyasha—"

"Right, okay, so mating is agreed on by the two people, I know this. What other way is there?" He paced the fence back and forth before the two humans, arms crossed and temper rising. Be patient. Always be patient. Well, damn it, some things were too fucking important to be patient for!

"I spent enough time with the In Youkai to know that mating with them is always consensual. Your otou-san's people are quite civilized, Inuyasha."

"Thank you so very much." _The point being?_

"Humans aren't like that, Inuyasha." Miroku's voice darkened even more. Inuyasha turned to him. "Humans are, sadly, not quite so civilized. 'Rape' is what we call it when someone is forced to have sex, to mate, without their consent."

__

Forced to mate without their consent? The idea floored Inuyasha. He sat down, rolling the thought over in his head. According to his mother, sex was supposed to be a beautiful thing shared between two people who dearly loved each other. His mother had been so kind and wise he'd never questioned her. Sex was beautiful, mating was for people who loved each other and that was the way it was, damn it. However, hadn't she said 'supposed to be'? Just as Miroku had said mating was 'supposed to be consensual'? So, she had left room for that later discussion, only it had never come. His father was already dead, and once she died no one wanted him and no one ever bothered to complete whatever explanations his mother left unfinished. 

__

Forced to mate without their consent . . . oh gods . . . 

"This . . . thing," he found he couldn't say the word aloud, now that he knew what it meant, "I-I still don't understand what it has to do with Kagome." Except he thought he did, oh dear gods he thought he knew. 

"Inuyasha," Miroku leaned forward and put a hand on the hanyou's shoulder, "we think that's what happened to her, what those men did." The monk looked up at Sango, who spoke through rage.

"Most men don't understand," she said, hands clenching the fence railing, "how horrible the act is and how badly it affects the woman."

"There are some exceptions," Miroku said with a small, sad smile. 

"Not many," Sango shot back, apparently unmoved by the monk's show of sympathy. "Rape isn't something a woman can shake off in a night and be her normal self the next day, Inuyasha, so don't expect Kagome-chan to be fine tomorrow. She may not be fine ever again. You saw how she's not comfortable with men around. She associates any man's touch with those three pigs who did this to her." Sango's pretty face twisted into an ugly scowl. "Kagome-chan may never get over this, and what are you going to do, Inuyasha?"

"W-What do you mean?" The helplessness did not leave now that he knew. It only got worse with every word spoken. 

"We know how you and Kagome-chan feel about each other. It's obvious to anyone who knows the two of you more than a day. Did you plan to ask her to be your mate when this is all over?" Sango lowered her gaze to peer directly into his eyes. "Before she probably would have accepted without a second thought. Now? I think she may _want_ it just as much as she did before, but Inuyasha, will she be _able_ to be your mate?"

He remembered the way Kagome struck him when he tried to touch her, the brief terror in her eyes. Had she even recognized him? She jerked from everyone who tried to touch her, especially men, calming only when she saw the face of a woman. Oh gods. Inuyasha lowered his head. The ground swirled in a dizzying display as the thoughts in his head joined the giddy dance. Kagome had been hurt. Destroyed, torn perhaps beyond repair. Fire burned in his chest, the vengeful beast within trying to claw a way to the surface. Miroku and Sango sat silently. He knew they felt the rage too, knew they hurt for Kagome as much as he did. Why didn't either of them suggest finding the bastards? 

"What are we waiting for?" He rose, holding back from hitting something by tightening his hands into fists. "Let's go after them."

"Inuyasha—"

"What?!?" He spun on Miroku. The monk winced back in a manner Inuyasha had never seen. The hanyou realized he had snarled the word, and managed to keep his voice calm when next he spoke. "What do you want?"

"It's not that easy. These aren't youkai."

"I don't care! Those fucking bastards hurt Kagome and I'm going to find them and shove their—"

"Inuyasha!" Sango jumped from the fence rail and glared at him. "We'd like to do the same, believe me we would."

"Then why don't you?"

"Because, these are humans," Miroku sighed and shook his head. "Monsters yes, but of the human variety and those type are much more difficult to get rid of; they tend to have groups of supporters." Angry eyes stared out from the monk's face, eyes that had, Inuyasha realized, seen much of what the monk spoke. "When any one of these men is accused, an entire horde of men comes to his aide. They give him an alibi, anything he needs to get out of it."

"I don't plan on accusing anyone. I make my own justice, bozou." 

"So you'll be a murderer again." Sango interjected, sneer twisting her pretty face. "You remember how it felt to see the aftermath of your slaughter of those bandits. They weren't good men, Inuyasha, but did that make you feel better?"

Guilt ripped through him, and the image of the fallen men, both still fresh even after all the time that had passed. No, the fact that they'd been bandits and a threat to the innocent humans of the village meant little in the face of their lost lives. Helplessness came again, mixed with his fury and the two together threatened to burn him from the inside out. Was there to be no justice for Kagome? None?!?

"As much as we would like vengeance," Miroku was saying, "all we can do is do our best to help Kagome-sama heal. It will take time, but Kagome-sama is strong. Personally, I believe she will be able to get through this."

Sango snorted, shaking her head. 

"You really don't understand, do you?" She stepped close to Miroku, pointing a finger angrily in his face. "Listen, I've seen more women be permanently destroyed by rape than recover from it. None of them ever knew justice, because as far as the men are concerned, it's always the woman's fault. 'If the whore couldn't protect herself better, then she deserved what she got'." Sango turned blazing eyes to Inuyasha. "That's the attitude of people towards a rape victim."

"B-But that's INSANE!" Blame the woman? How could anyone ever see something like this as the woman's fault? "How is it the woman's fault if the man doesn't fucking understand the meaning of the word no?"

For just a moment, Sango's hard eyes melted. She even smiled just the slightest.

"It's not her fault, Inuyasha, but that's the way these ignorant fools see the world and rape. It can't be helped." 

"I think we may be forgetting one thing," Miroku said, thoughtful expression softening the anger that hardened his face since Kagome's discovery. He turned questioning eyes to them as he spoke. "Kagome-sama comes from a future version of this world. What are the implications of rape there? How do women deal with rape in the future? I think those questions and their answers will have a lot to do with how Kagome-sama acts and ultimately how she heals."

Sango started to answer, but Inuyasha found himself tiring of the discussion. He knew all he needed to know, and couldn't go after the bastards guilty of the crime, so what else was there to do but wait?

__

Kagome, will you be okay?

End.

****

Authors Notes: Good question, ne? Will Kagome be okay? I don't know, it depends on how you look at it. This is only the end of the beginning for _Fragile Soul_. This story will be posted at fanfiction.net, at the Celestial Library ( ), but also at my collection of darker fics, Darkside ( ). The reason for this is that _Fragile Soul_ will have many endings, some hopeful, some not, and some even more along the lines of real life. For real life is like that; there can be many endings to one situation. You decide which one you think is best. 

Sango is right, rape isn't something a person gets over quickly. However, those people suffering from the aftermath of rape are not just women. This story focuses on women because it is set in the past, and the person raped is a woman. I'm not saying that men and children did not get raped in the Sengoku Jidai. I am only saying that those particular forms would have been ever more of an anathema to the people, and never, ever spoken of. Even today, many people don't realize that men can be and are raped, because the same stigma is attached to the act as there was then. A man loses his manhood, becomes less than a man, if he admits to having been raped. This isn't true, of course, but it's the attitude society has placed into the minds of our men. 

Our society has many attitudes that need to be focused on and corrected. After all, really how different is out society from those of the past? Rapists still go free more often than not, and victims are still made to believe that they are somehow at fault. Not much more enlightened than the ignorant peasants of the past, now are we?

I hope you enjoyed _Fragile Soul_, and that you will enjoy the endings that come, though not all will paint a happy picture. 

~~**Sailorcelestial**~~


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